My green ball came in the mail today! Yipee!!!!! It got here much sooner than I thought so that was a really nice surprise! I decided to bring it out and pump it up at Aspen's so that way we could spend a little time hanging out in an undemanding fashion. I got to the barn and she met me at the gate again! Poor thing has some ugly little cut on her forehead - I don't know how she keeps finding things to injure herself on. I brought her into the arena where I fed her her vitamins and brushed her down (she promptly rolled after I completed this!). I then took off her halter and let her mosey around while I got my ball all set up. Once I realized that I had the hose on the wrong nozzle for air it went much quicker! The horses (Aspen and the 2 over the fence) were bothered by the whistling noise at first but quickly came back to investigate.
After it was FINALLY full of air I spent some time rolling it away from us and encouraging her to follow me/the ball. Pretty soon she wanted to start shoving it around with her nose and even tried to get her feet on it! lol I even got to put the ball up on her back today, which I didn't really think I'd be able to going into it.
The flies were terrible today and the only way to really get rid of them was to either pretend you were having a seizure and jump, twitch, and slap yourself constantly or get moving! Aspen and I played with some traveling circles and jumps. I got a couple really nice jumps and some really beautiful soft canter circles. I didn't ask for the canter but she offered it and maintained it so I went with it. Beautiful, beautiful. I also got a very enthusiastic and very on-pattern figure-8 today!!
During our time together it started raining lightly, the sky went purple, and it began thundering - so majestic! At the end of our session I turned her loose in the arena and played with her for just a minute at liberty with stick-to-me and squeezing between the barrels. She did great and had an awesome draw to me/followed me at the trot everywhere!!
I took her into the field to graze, you can tell we've had a lot of rain lately as the grass is just springing up and is so tall and lush. I sat on her back for a while and let her wander around and eat. I took a couple short videos on her back - you'll have to excuse all the jerking of the camera (swatting flies!) and the random cut offs. I accidently hit the record on/off button a few times when I didn't intend!
Overall, today was such a nice afternoon and I can't wait to play with her again tomorrow!
After it was FINALLY full of air I spent some time rolling it away from us and encouraging her to follow me/the ball. Pretty soon she wanted to start shoving it around with her nose and even tried to get her feet on it! lol I even got to put the ball up on her back today, which I didn't really think I'd be able to going into it.
The flies were terrible today and the only way to really get rid of them was to either pretend you were having a seizure and jump, twitch, and slap yourself constantly or get moving! Aspen and I played with some traveling circles and jumps. I got a couple really nice jumps and some really beautiful soft canter circles. I didn't ask for the canter but she offered it and maintained it so I went with it. Beautiful, beautiful. I also got a very enthusiastic and very on-pattern figure-8 today!!
During our time together it started raining lightly, the sky went purple, and it began thundering - so majestic! At the end of our session I turned her loose in the arena and played with her for just a minute at liberty with stick-to-me and squeezing between the barrels. She did great and had an awesome draw to me/followed me at the trot everywhere!!
I took her into the field to graze, you can tell we've had a lot of rain lately as the grass is just springing up and is so tall and lush. I sat on her back for a while and let her wander around and eat. I took a couple short videos on her back - you'll have to excuse all the jerking of the camera (swatting flies!) and the random cut offs. I accidently hit the record on/off button a few times when I didn't intend!
Overall, today was such a nice afternoon and I can't wait to play with her again tomorrow!
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| Aspen after having just pushed the ball - my timing was off, dang it! |
